- Focus on action over grappling
moves
- Good assortment of modes and challenges
- The characters are even more cartoon-like than their
real-world counter-parts
- Classic wrestlers
- Some truly hideous wrestlers can be created with the "Create a
Wrestler" feature

- No option to turn off the
wrestler intros before each match
- Bizarre mini-game to exit the ring during a cage match
- A hands-on tutorial is absent
- Commentary grows old pretty quick

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WWE
All-Stars

Score: 8.0 / 10

I stopped following spectacle/soap opera
wrestling events after about age 11, so almost all my wrestling memories
revolve around the likes of Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate
Warrior, George "The Animal" Steele, and Bret Michaels grappling and
flinging each other around the ring.

In WWE All-Stars, the roster is split between current wrestlers and old
school grapplers. In either camp, they've all received a shellac of
action figure which makes them even more cartoon-like than their
real-life counterparts. And if the "stock" characters aren't enough, the
Create a Wrestler provides many tweakable

options to produce some truly horrific
wrestlers. My first wrestler had a massive barrel chest, spider-like
spindle legs, and something that projected from his abdomen, as if an
Alien chest-burster was about to poke through.

All this is a general indication of the kind of action to be found in
the actual fighting. The focus is on action over grappling, which is
exactly the kind of thing that always put wrestling

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games in the background. WWE All-Stars is much more speedy, with
outlandish, exaggerated moves that reminded me of the old the Ultimate
Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy - Legends vs. New Generation though not
quite at the same speed. Each wrestler's signature move has been easily
translated into outlandish, fun-to-watch moves that have no connection
to reality.

It's the stuff around the wrestling matches
that irritates me the most. The wrestler intros before each match are
fine viewing the first time, but successive matches make these them the
most skipped thing since rope. My only guess as to why there's no option
to turn these intros off is that they must be part of the licence
agreement with WWE. The commentary quickly becomes repetitive and the
lack of hands-on tutorial means too much time stumbling around figuring
out the finer points of the control and offering strategic tips. As is,
I actually felt frustrated with the speed at which my opponents could
finish me off. That first couple of hours just made me mad. After
spending some time with the manual and plugging in a second control to
beat on a dummy opponent, results started tipping in my favor, at least
against the AI. Playing online is a whole other story! Every match I
have played so far has resulted in a loss. That's not a huge deal to me.

The only aspect of the actual matches I
found incredibly annoying was the bizarre mini-game implemented to
escape the Cage. After sufficiently beating down an opponent and
climbing to the top of the cage wall, a mini-game activates. An arrow
slides back and forth at varying speeds across a meter and there's a
"safe zone" the player must hit a few times to get the wrestler out of
the ring. It does not feel like an organic solution.

With a good assortment of modes and
wrestlers to unlock (and hopefully some DLC wrestlers as well) the
hardcore fan should be appeased, and with the focus on movement rather
than grappling less hardcore fans will find something to love.